


Do You Wish to Remember?

by GertieCraign



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Acala - deity who burns away impediments to enlightenment, Be very careful what you ask for, Crowley lives, Dark Past, Destiel - Freeform, Fucked up gifts from deities, Gen, Guilty Castiel, Horrible thing happening to Cas and the boys have to watch, No Sex, Not a bad deity but brutally effective at his job, Not sure the timeframe for this fic, Past Abuse, Psychological Torture, Recovered Memories, Redemption, The only way out is through
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 04:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14229450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GertieCraign/pseuds/GertieCraign
Summary: Warning to reader:This is the only scene I have developed in my head for this fic. Given that this is a procrastination fic, I may never write the rest.  Sorry. I got distracted and this fell out and now I don't know what to do with it.Team Free Will encountered the deity Acala.Upon surveying their minds and hearts, Acala decided to focus on Cas and give him a choice:  Remember every past mistake, every evil committed by him or against him, and every consequence... Or lose the one he loves.Deities can be vague. Acala was actually trying to help. Our boys misunderstood.Luckily, Cas chose to save Dean.Cas's ordeal will begin at the next solar eclipse - which happens to be at 5:51am the next morning.





	Do You Wish to Remember?

**Author's Note:**

> This is the horrible shit I do to Cas when my more lighthearted fics refuse to let me write the next chapter of them.  
> For god's sake, send help for the other fics, before I hurt him worse. I'm beginning to hate myself for this.
> 
> Unbeta’d.

 

They devised every possible test for the trap, even before they started building it. They dug through the bunker’s archive like a whirlwind, leaving a huge mess to clean up later, but they didn’t care. They needed to verify Cas’s design - his memory was getting sketchier with each passing hour.

Eventually, they resorted to calling Crowley and endured his irritating recriminations, and _‘I told you so’_ s, just to see if he might know a quicker way to safely confine a seraph. As it turned out, he knew quite a lot about it. They didn’t ask how he knew. They were afraid he might actually tell them, and given what they were about to do to their best friend, neither of them could bear to listen.

They mixed their blood together in the bowl, ensuring the spell would protect them both, and then painted the sigils as quickly as they could on the door frame, all four walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

Dean had balked at the design at first. He was certain it must be overkill - just Cas being hyper-thorough because he was scared he might hurt them. They didn’t have time for that, as Dean very loudly reminded him. His protests vanished when Crowley’s description of an effective, non-lethal seraph trap included far more warding, several additional restraints, a whole list of spell ingredients, and a couple of rare, ancient implements.

Cas snorted as he listened to the demon rattle off the absurd number of security precautions. After the call ended, he looked at his friends through the shimmering barrier of flames and grinned.

“It’s rather satisfying to know a seraph can still inspire that level of fear in a demon.” A little cocky smugness bled through. Dean and Sam both grinned back at him.

“Damn right,” Dean agreed with a nod. He winked at his friend before he left to get the additional ingredients. He didn’t see Cas crumple into the corner; press his cheek against the cold concrete; allow his vessel to pant through the pain. And he didn’t see his brother’s heart break as he forced himself to ignore Cas’s distress and kept working on the sigils.

It took longer than they’d hoped. Cas’s design was old Enochian and each sigil required precision and extensive brushwork. They had to stop twice to open up fresh wounds and refill their ‘painting’ bowls. Cas would heal them after this was all over, but even so...things were getting pretty gorey...and everyone kept checking the time. It was already five a.m. Fifty one minutes until the eclipse...

They were all starting to hate eclipses.

There wasn’t time to sink new eye bolts into the floor. The unwarded one that was already there would have to do.  Dean quickly etched more warding into the concrete around it with a syringe and a bottle of sulphuric acid. The shapes were crude - he had to abandon some of them, because the acid over-ran the lines - but most of them were good enough. They were just one more layer of security. If they failed, there were several more layers waiting to take their place. Cas had insisted upon that. It was the only way they’d gotten him to agree to stay...

That argument had been fierce. Cas had been determined to get as far away from them as possible and to suffer through it alone...which was, of course, unimaginably stupid. Dean and Sam had no qualms about making that perfectly clear to their friend. Cas had put up a hell of a resistance, before reluctantly agreeing to stay.

The three of them had spent all the rest of the night scrambling to prepare, but at T-minus-two-hours, Cas’s faith in their efforts wavered and he tried to leave. It didn’t go over well. Especially not with Dean. Things were said. There would be fallout. They knew they’d have to deal with that later, but in end, Dean convinced him.

By the time they’d finished preparations and Dean and Sam had moved outside the warding line, Cas was too weak to walk. He still somehow managed to stay on his feet, though, shuffling out of his corner when Dean extinguished the precautionary enclosure of holy fire remotely. He stumbled toward the center of the room and managed to get very close to where the chains lay waiting for him, before he collapsed. He took a moment to gather his reserves and then crawled the rest of the way.

‘ _Stubborn bastard,_ ’ Dean prayed without meaning to.

Cas looked up at him and they shared a moment intense enough for Sam to get uncomfortable and feel the need to turn away. A tiny smile tugged up one corner of Dean’s mouth. Cas returned it. Time was too short for goodbyes, if that’s really what this was...so they said nothing - Dean wouldn’t want that speech anyway.

Sam’s eyes landed on the weapon leaning against the wall outside the dungeon door. It had been created specifically to kill his friend and there was a stack of spare ammo next to it.

He closed his eyes and breathed. The final contingency had been laid out very clearly: if the trap failed, one of them would have to kill Cas, immediately, without any further argument or rescue attempts from either of them. There wouldn’t be enough time and the risk to their lives, to the archive, and possibly to the entire surrounding area would be far too great.

Both men had reluctantly agreed, but Cas knew this was an outcome Dean couldn’t abide. He’d throw his own life away to save his friend. The only thing that would force Dean’s hand would be the threat to Sam’s life, but even with that incentive, Cas worried that both of them would cut it too close in their efforts to save him. He also worried that Dean might be the one who’d kill him - and what that would do to Dean - and he kicked himself once again for allowing his friends to talk him into staying in the bunker for this.

After he’d finished planning the warding, Cas had spent nearly an hour rigging an old crossbow to accurately fire an angel blade. He then gathered five additional blades from the arsenal and put them with the bow, outside the dungeon.

He’d hidden his own spare blade in the lining of his coat earlier. He knew Dean would ask him to surrender his primary blade, for sure...and Cas couldn’t risk his friends letting their feelings for him get all three of them killed.

Once Cas had secured the shackles around his wrists, waist, and ankles, Sam recited the Enochian syllables. They watched the runes light and briefly burn.

Cas curled into a ball, around the eye hook in the floor. He only whimpered once, while the spell worked to further weaken him and imprison his grace within the boundaries of the warding. That one small, pained sound was enough, though. Dean’s staunch veneer cracked and he took a couple of steps away from the door, lacing his fingers behind his head and pacing.

The warding sizzled down to a mild glow. Dean scrubbed roughly at his own hair before he forced his feelings aside and took his place next to his brother. The two of them stood vigil just outside the open door and waited for Cas to recover.

“I’m ready,” Cas’s voice barely made it out of the room. He was panting hard, making speech difficult for him, but he continued as best he could. “You need...cover...your ears…eyes…”

“We got it, Cas. Don’t worry about us,” Sam assured him. He reached up to wiggle the gun range’s ear protection headset that hung around his neck and then gestured toward Dean’s...even though Cas obviously wasn’t looking.

“You just focus on what you gotta do,” Dean said. “You bust my ear with your mojo, you can heal it when you get outta there.”

Cas didn’t say anything or acknowledge him.

“Ok?” Dean coaxed, not really sure why he needed Cas to agree, but he couldn’t let it go.

Cas slowly nodded. “Ok,” he answered.

“Ok,” Dean repeated, mostly to himself, and bent down to set the bundle of dried sage on the floor.

“The sage is right here, Cas,” Sam called to him. “Just outside the door against the opposite wall. Whatever you can do to get it to smoulder or catch fire...or just...you know...try to do anything to it. Then we’ll know for sure.”

Cas nodded again.

“We’re walkin’ away now. Count to five. Then do...whatever you need to.” Sam saw his friend nod once more and he Dean moved to the bottom of the staircase, twenty feet away from the entrance to the dungeon. They waited, ear plugs wedged in and headsets ready to add another layer.

Cas waited a bit longer than Sam had asked, but not much.

The two men watched, not sure what they were about to see, but prepared to close and cover their eyes, just in case.

They expected a bit of a ramp up, but Cas didn’t give them one. The roar was incredible. Showers of sparks and what looked like burning bits of paper flew out toward corridor, but they fell to the floor when they hit an invisible barrier that just barely bowed out from the dungeon door frame.

Dean and Sam both partially shielded their eyes instinctively, but it was hardly a blinding sight. They did put their headsets on immediately, though. The roar would have been deafening without protection, they were certain, and it was getting louder.

Cas’s first attempt to breach the warding was dramatic and it lasted nearly half a minute. It was obvious he was changing tactics throughout, trying to find any frequency or angelic trick that would pierce that barrier. The colors coming from the dungeon, and the vibrations from the roar were varying rapidly.

Then...it all abruptly stopped. Sam and Dean looked at each other, wondering if Cas was done. Eventually, Sam pulled off his headset and took a step back toward the dungeon. Dean reached out and grabbed his brother’s arm, stopping him. His eyes never left the dungeon door.

Sam looked at him curiously, but he understood what Dean meant, when he noticed the deep rumble coming up from the floor, through the souls of his boots. He stepped back and put his headset back on.

The atmospheric pressure increased with the intensity of the rumble. Both of them put their hands up to press the headsets against their ears. A few seconds passed and they both noticed it was a little harder to breathe. The sound was echoing in their lungs. They looked at each other nervously.

The first flash had them both squinting. Then the lights went out. The emergency lights came on...and then they went out, too. The only light now, was the bright, violet glow coming from the dungeon. It increased slowly, then held steady.

The bunker began to shake. Small tremors at first, but it increased until small trails of plaster and concrete dust trickled down from overhead pipes and tiny cracks in the ceiling.

The next flash came. Then the next. And then the light was coming toward the door in circular waves...ring shaped pulses of power that blasted into that invisible barrier with ever increasing effectiveness. But then they seemed to meet the limit of their ability to push outward. The pulses grew brighter, and then stopped.

Dean and Sam stayed put. The shaking stopped, but the deep rumble was still there. It seemed to increase and then decrease, like something huge was taking a deep breath. Moments later, a sight that would haunt their thoughts and dreams for months afterward, appeared through the doorway.

Dean had always wondered about Cas’s true form. Cas had mentioned it a few times in an offhand way, but never actually tried to describe what it - HE - really was. Just that he was as big as the Chrysler Building and could become a ‘wavelength of celestial intent’, which wasn’t exactly a helpful description. Dean had always imagined some type of physical form, though. A shape, an animal with wings, a stone pillar a thousand feet tall...something solid and...real.

What pushed nearly two feet through the invisible, hopefully impenetrable, barrier, was something that was neither solid nor pure energy. It was a head...or a face...or possibly a dozen faces that all merged into one. It had an outline of sorts, but the shape kept changing...like a pulsating pool of liquid with half the stars in the Milky Way swirling in it. There were eyes...hundreds of them, and yet there only seemed to be two. It was impossible. Dean’s mind could barely process what he was seeing and he wondered if he was supposed to be seeing it at all. If this was Cas’ true form, maybe this is what Pamela experienced right before her eyes caught fire.

He reached his hand up to cover his eyes, but his hand never made it all the way. He couldn’t stop looking.

The liquid head of stars retreated back into the dungeon, but the roar returned at full volume. The violet light flared brighter and brighter...almost too much to look at, but not quite.

The head pushed outward again, this time making it just a couple inches further through the barrier, but it just wasn’t enough to reach the sage. A mouth opened. A huge mouth. Or maybe a beak. Or jaws and teeth...there was no way to tell.

The head tilted down slightly, and then thrust forward as hard as it could, mouth/beak/vortex - whatever - open wide, and a thick tongue of blue-hot stars rolled out of it and slapped against the barrier.

Cas screamed.

Both men hit the floor, hands over their ears, as they squinted and continued to watch in awe. The angel’s true voice was piercing in the physical realm, but it also resonated painfully in dimensions Dean and Sam instinctively realized they could somehow perceive with their souls. That would have been disturbing enough, but the scream was also coming from the physical aspects of his true form. It ripped through the corridor like the blast-wave roar of the t-rex in Jurassic Park.

It had been difficult to breathe before. It was painful, now. The pressure from the sound alone was stealing their air, but the pulse waves of magic Cas was lobbing at that barrier was making them both sick.

Cas completed his scream and the pulses stopped. The form began to dissolve and the stars swirled back into a hundred eyes and then into just a swirling pool...and then the head retreated and the bowed, invisible barrier snapped back to vertical with a dull thud.

Dean and Sam looked at each other and waited. When they couldn’t take the suspense anymore, they slowly rose and very tentatively moved toward the dungeon door.

There was still light coming from inside, but the brilliant violet had rapidly faded. By the time their eyes had adjusted, the light was reduced to a glowing pale yellow...then orange...then red…

The emergency lights came back on and the corridor glowed with a brighter red than was coming from the dungeon. Sam reached the bundle of sage and squatted down to retrieve it. He brought it back up for his brother to inspect, too. They both agreed - it had been completely unaffected.

Sam held the sage, nervously fiddling with it as his eyes scanned the scene inside the dungeon. Dean stepped around his brother enough to see the dungeon, too. The two stood in silence for a long moment, mouths slightly open in shock.

They quickly identified the source of the dull red glow:  the partially melted and still slowly deforming metal shelves that had once served to hide the dungeon behind the guise of a storeroom. Small popping sounds came from the metal as it twisted and the shelves sloped lower.

The sigils were all glowing a faint, shimmering gold, indicating that the spell was active. It was just as Cas had told them - a way to indicate the trap was working and he was still secured, in case there was any question during the ordeal.  

The room looked eerily beautiful. Sparks rained down from the overhead light, though the bulb itself never blew. It seemed to be creating sparks and ozone from it’s metal shade.

Cas faintly glowed in the ambient light. The sparks showering down around him added an ethereal look - one Dean found to be all too familiar.

He was kneeling on one knee, his other leg in front of him, foot braced on the floor.  He was leaned over, fingertips of both hands resting on the concrete to either side of his forward leg. The pose somehow gave the vague impression of a raptor that had just swooped out of the sky and made a hard, fast landing.

Dean and Sam stayed quiet. Neither of them had any idea what to do with what they’d just witnessed, so they waited...and watched Cas.

Slowly, the seraph raised his head enough to look at them both. He was panting and shaking again and there was a tiny trickle of blood coming out of the inner corner of his right eye.

He took as deep a breath as he could, so he could speak.

“The warding appears effective,” he gurgled out...then coughed up an alarming amount of blood. He spat it out and looked back at his friends. “Sorry about the shelves.”

His front foot began to slide forward and his torso leaned.

“Cas,” Dean called out, just before the angel’s leg shot all the way forward and he collapsed into a tangled heap of chains.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> AUTHOR’S RANT/WHINE/BITCHING:  
> I’m gonna leave this up, as is, just as a reminder to myself of how bad the flow of my writing can be, when my brain refuses to come back online for months.  
> If any of you who are following my other WIPs want to know why it’s been so long since i’ve updated them...THIS is why. *sighs, closes eyes, shakes head in disgust* It’s not that I don’t know what’s supposed to happen in those other stories. The ideas are all there - there’s no stopping the flow of those - but after fussing over _this_ weird little scene and rereading it...I mean...just...dammit! It’s like I'm suddenly incapable of moving block 'a' so that it comes _before_ block 'b', and then smoothing the transition for a nice read! I mean...wth?! Seriously?!  
>  Come on, brain. Please? Pretty, pretty please? I just wanna write the stuff that’s waiting. What do you need from me, huh? A brain massage? Comfy, lobe-shaped slippers and a robe? Blackjack and hookers? WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?!?!


End file.
